Like kabams looooong history of being a pure reactionary company, they will do nothing unless they are absolutely forced to, that's how they have always operated. The problem now is, they aren't even trying to hide it, it's in your face.
how do we know they're not working on stuff in the background? a forum mod or community manager isn't going to reveal that.
2) Communication: There's a significant lack of it. Fully appreciate that there's only so much Pinwheel and others can convey without feedback from the devs, but just in general, it's lacking. 2b) They obviously aren't obligated to do it, but i think if the community managers (Pinwheel, Dork, and Karate Mike) gave us a description of their day, perhaps we'd lay off them. Currently, my understanding is that they exist to keep us informed. I have no doubt there's more to their daily obligations to Kabam, but please educate us, so I'm not left to wonder why we go days without hearing anything.
Know there was a lot of disruption in this thread from the Davids (apologies for that, believe that problem is solved), but plenty of fair feedback here. First of all want to say thank you for your understanding and the feedback. I can't give a full response to everything right now, but I know this specific kind of breakdown has been asked (I think by you but if not by someone else) for before. I can't quite give an hour by hour because as acknowledged at the beginning of this thread there's a good bit of stuff we work on that we can't discuss before its time, but I can give a more general sense of the breadth of tasks involved.
First of all, yes, 100%, communication is one of our prime roles and responsibilities. However, communication is a two way street, and in our case we are the street, connecting up y'all's feedback, thoughts, concerns, reports etc to the game team and vice versa, connecting the game teams updates, fixes, changes, and plans (when appropriate) to y'all. Given that its more than just a few people involved (many hundreds and thousands of y'all at the very least on the one hand haha and the entire game team on the other) we also help to coordinate the planning and preparation of this messaging. Sometimes when you see an announcement it might be as simple as someone on the team saying hey we noticed this, we're gonna make this change, can you let them know real quick. Quite often though its a longer process than that, discussing the change, planning out when and how to release the message, what the knock on effects will be, etc.
So there's communication facilitation, which when there's multiple messages all going out at different times, requires more meetings than you would think haha. But in addition to that, there's the everyday stuff that y'all think about in terms of us being around and present. Posts on the forums, answers on discord, etc etc. This often gets sprinkled in between everything else we do and in the case of Dave for instance if you don't see him for a couple days its because that man has more meetings that just about anyone and I feel bad every time I look at his calendar.
In addition to that there's planning for events like nycc or comic-con, mcu tie-in activations and thinking of ways to have fun and engage with y'all as part of it, livestream planning (I know there was a joke about spending time writing jokes but in all seriousness it takes a ton of work to put together all the information and segments for each stream. I know there's some, fair, discussion in terms of the content folks wanna see vs don't wanna see, but no matter what the content is it takes dedicated time to put it all together), etc etc.
On top of that there's plenty of meetings with the game team to discuss all kinds of things, bugs (yes this is a top topic for us, for me specifically, and one that frustrates us like it frustrates you. We're working on it and I wish it could go faster than it can but its going as fast as we can make it right now), new features walkthroughs, champ design reviews, etc etc. Plus Rex oversees/produces the Deep Dives every month which takes an incredible amount of time between learning the champs, script writing, shooting, and editing.
I can probably list a few more things but hopefully the overall picture becomes more clear that, despite it often being the funniest part of my day and just generally a very enjoyable one, interacting with y'all here and on discord is just the tip of the iceburg for a community manager. We dip our toes into just about everything cause we gotta be ready to try and communicate just about everything haha. The unfortunate side effect of that is we wear a lot of hats and do a lot of juggling.
*Pause for breath*
I'm laughing to myself a little bit writing all this cause anyone who was part of the Forged to Fight or Mirroverse (or MROC rip) communities will tell you, this is me returning to form. I am a very wordy person by default and have been working to try and make myself a more streamlined, efficient communicator over the years. But this topic felt like it deserved the full Pinwheel essay treatment. Not as a way to list a bunch of excuses, not as a way to beg for something or say woe is me, but just to lay it out to hopefully make it make a bit more sense. We can always do a better job, and I don't want y'all to keep holding us accountable, but hopefully this helps make things a little clearer why there may be dips or gaps.
Like kabams looooong history of being a pure reactionary company, they will do nothing unless they are absolutely forced to, that's how they have always operated. The problem now is, they aren't even trying to hide it, it's in your face.
how do we know they're not working on stuff in the background? a forum mod or community manager isn't going to reveal that.
I can reveal that: we are 100% working on things behind the scenes almost all the time xD Thats how big reveals happen, lots of prep work ahead of time.
2) Communication: There's a significant lack of it. Fully appreciate that there's only so much Pinwheel and others can convey without feedback from the devs, but just in general, it's lacking. 2b) They obviously aren't obligated to do it, but i think if the community managers (Pinwheel, Dork, and Karate Mike) gave us a description of their day, perhaps we'd lay off them. Currently, my understanding is that they exist to keep us informed. I have no doubt there's more to their daily obligations to Kabam, but please educate us, so I'm not left to wonder why we go days without hearing anything.
Know there was a lot of disruption in this thread from the Davids (apologies for that, believe that problem is solved), but plenty of fair feedback here. First of all want to say thank you for your understanding and the feedback. I can't give a full response to everything right now, but I know this specific kind of breakdown has been asked (I think by you but if not by someone else) for before. I can't quite give an hour by hour because as acknowledged at the beginning of this thread there's a good bit of stuff we work on that we can't discuss before its time, but I can give a more general sense of the breadth of tasks involved.
First of all, yes, 100%, communication is one of our prime roles and responsibilities. However, communication is a two way street, and in our case we are the street, connecting up y'all's feedback, thoughts, concerns, reports etc to the game team and vice versa, connecting the game teams updates, fixes, changes, and plans (when appropriate) to y'all. Given that its more than just a few people involved (many hundreds and thousands of y'all at the very least on the one hand haha and the entire game team on the other) we also help to coordinate the planning and preparation of this messaging. Sometimes when you see an announcement it might be as simple as someone on the team saying hey we noticed this, we're gonna make this change, can you let them know real quick. Quite often though its a longer process than that, discussing the change, planning out when and how to release the message, what the knock on effects will be, etc.
So there's communication facilitation, which when there's multiple messages all going out at different times, requires more meetings than you would think haha. But in addition to that, there's the everyday stuff that y'all think about in terms of us being around and present. Posts on the forums, answers on discord, etc etc. This often gets sprinkled in between everything else we do and in the case of Dave for instance if you don't see him for a couple days its because that man has more meetings that just about anyone and I feel bad every time I look at his calendar.
In addition to that there's planning for events like nycc or comic-con, mcu tie-in activations and thinking of ways to have fun and engage with y'all as part of it, livestream planning (I know there was a joke about spending time writing jokes but in all seriousness it takes a ton of work to put together all the information and segments for each stream. I know there's some, fair, discussion in terms of the content folks wanna see vs don't wanna see, but no matter what the content is it takes dedicated time to put it all together), etc etc.
On top of that there's plenty of meetings with the game team to discuss all kinds of things, bugs (yes this is a top topic for us, for me specifically, and one that frustrates us like it frustrates you. We're working on it and I wish it could go faster than it can but its going as fast as we can make it right now), new features walkthroughs, champ design reviews, etc etc. Plus Rex oversees/produces the Deep Dives every month which takes an incredible amount of time between learning the champs, script writing, shooting, and editing.
I can probably list a few more things but hopefully the overall picture becomes more clear that, despite it often being the funniest part of my day and just generally a very enjoyable one, interacting with y'all here and on discord is just the tip of the iceburg for a community manager. We dip our toes into just about everything cause we gotta be ready to try and communicate just about everything haha. The unfortunate side effect of that is we wear a lot of hats and do a lot of juggling.
*Pause for breath*
I'm laughing to myself a little bit writing all this cause anyone who was part of the Forged to Fight or Mirroverse (or MROC rip) communities will tell you, this is me returning to form. I am a very wordy person by default and have been working to try and make myself a more streamlined, efficient communicator over the years. But this topic felt like it deserved the full Pinwheel essay treatment. Not as a way to list a bunch of excuses, not as a way to beg for something or say woe is me, but just to lay it out to hopefully make it make a bit more sense. We can always do a better job, and I don't want y'all to keep holding us accountable, but hopefully this helps make things a little clearer why there may be dips or gaps.
To anyone who is going to call bs on the meetings, if anyone from kabam has said anything that's true at all it's that and I believe them. If you work corporate, especially tech, you have so many meetings for so many random things that most of the time are just wasting everyone's time while they could be working. And GOD FORBID your company is using agile scrum methodology. You waste so much time it's genuinely incomprehensible to anyone not working a job with it
2) Communication: There's a significant lack of it. Fully appreciate that there's only so much Pinwheel and others can convey without feedback from the devs, but just in general, it's lacking. 2b) They obviously aren't obligated to do it, but i think if the community managers (Pinwheel, Dork, and Karate Mike) gave us a description of their day, perhaps we'd lay off them. Currently, my understanding is that they exist to keep us informed. I have no doubt there's more to their daily obligations to Kabam, but please educate us, so I'm not left to wonder why we go days without hearing anything.
Know there was a lot of disruption in this thread from the Davids (apologies for that, believe that problem is solved), but plenty of fair feedback here. First of all want to say thank you for your understanding and the feedback. I can't give a full response to everything right now, but I know this specific kind of breakdown has been asked (I think by you but if not by someone else) for before. I can't quite give an hour by hour because as acknowledged at the beginning of this thread there's a good bit of stuff we work on that we can't discuss before its time, but I can give a more general sense of the breadth of tasks involved.
First of all, yes, 100%, communication is one of our prime roles and responsibilities. However, communication is a two way street, and in our case we are the street, connecting up y'all's feedback, thoughts, concerns, reports etc to the game team and vice versa, connecting the game teams updates, fixes, changes, and plans (when appropriate) to y'all. Given that its more than just a few people involved (many hundreds and thousands of y'all at the very least on the one hand haha and the entire game team on the other) we also help to coordinate the planning and preparation of this messaging. Sometimes when you see an announcement it might be as simple as someone on the team saying hey we noticed this, we're gonna make this change, can you let them know real quick. Quite often though its a longer process than that, discussing the change, planning out when and how to release the message, what the knock on effects will be, etc.
So there's communication facilitation, which when there's multiple messages all going out at different times, requires more meetings than you would think haha. But in addition to that, there's the everyday stuff that y'all think about in terms of us being around and present. Posts on the forums, answers on discord, etc etc. This often gets sprinkled in between everything else we do and in the case of Dave for instance if you don't see him for a couple days its because that man has more meetings that just about anyone and I feel bad every time I look at his calendar.
In addition to that there's planning for events like nycc or comic-con, mcu tie-in activations and thinking of ways to have fun and engage with y'all as part of it, livestream planning (I know there was a joke about spending time writing jokes but in all seriousness it takes a ton of work to put together all the information and segments for each stream. I know there's some, fair, discussion in terms of the content folks wanna see vs don't wanna see, but no matter what the content is it takes dedicated time to put it all together), etc etc.
On top of that there's plenty of meetings with the game team to discuss all kinds of things, bugs (yes this is a top topic for us, for me specifically, and one that frustrates us like it frustrates you. We're working on it and I wish it could go faster than it can but its going as fast as we can make it right now), new features walkthroughs, champ design reviews, etc etc. Plus Rex oversees/produces the Deep Dives every month which takes an incredible amount of time between learning the champs, script writing, shooting, and editing.
I can probably list a few more things but hopefully the overall picture becomes more clear that, despite it often being the funniest part of my day and just generally a very enjoyable one, interacting with y'all here and on discord is just the tip of the iceburg for a community manager. We dip our toes into just about everything cause we gotta be ready to try and communicate just about everything haha. The unfortunate side effect of that is we wear a lot of hats and do a lot of juggling.
*Pause for breath*
I'm laughing to myself a little bit writing all this cause anyone who was part of the Forged to Fight or Mirroverse (or MROC rip) communities will tell you, this is me returning to form. I am a very wordy person by default and have been working to try and make myself a more streamlined, efficient communicator over the years. But this topic felt like it deserved the full Pinwheel essay treatment. Not as a way to list a bunch of excuses, not as a way to beg for something or say woe is me, but just to lay it out to hopefully make it make a bit more sense. We can always do a better job, and I don't want y'all to keep holding us accountable, but hopefully this helps make things a little clearer why there may be dips or gaps.
To anyone who is going to call bs on the meetings, if anyone from kabam has said anything that's true at all it's that and I believe them.
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
I don't think it's asking too much, but I feel like it would go a long way with the community.
@KabamPinwheel Genuinely, you’re one of the best community managers I think I’ve ever seen for a game team. As someone who used to help moderate D2 forums, I can only IMAGINE how busy you and the community team must be pretty much all the time. It’s super unfortunate that the game seems riddled with bugs, but it’s very very encouraging to hear directly from the horses mouth; that the issues are noticed and being worked on/prioritized. So, thank you for that.
Like kabams looooong history of being a pure reactionary company, they will do nothing unless they are absolutely forced to, that's how they have always operated. The problem now is, they aren't even trying to hide it, it's in your face.
how do we know they're not working on stuff in the background? a forum mod or community manager isn't going to reveal that.
I can reveal that: we are 100% working on things behind the scenes almost all the time xD Thats how big reveals happen, lots of prep work ahead of time.
you absolutely can, but they want details and timelines way in advance that are probably under NDA lol. they wrongly assume that because something is not announced, that it's not being worked on.
@KabamPinwheel I would be happy though if a post gets lots of traction like the one for battle ground rewards, maybe just pop in and take just one minute and say I hear you guys and at least let us know that. I truly understand you dont have answers all the time and maybe cant get them but let us know you at least heard us and pass it to the game team. has there been any discussions on bg rewards? thank you for your time
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
I like this idea, and I think we could do a lot with it. I'll do some thinking on this.
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed - We meet every week to lay out every new bug for the board, and then Pinwheel updates the board every Friday to the new information
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
I like this idea, and I think we could do a lot with it. I'll do some thinking on this.
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed - We meet every week to lay out every new bug for the board, and then Pinwheel updates the board every Friday to the new information
Personally, I think the community team should just be expanded, it feels much smaller and inactive compared to previous years and would hopefully alleviate this burden the new community managers have of balancing live streams, discord, forums, announcements, and deep dives. Y'all had a super successful banquet according to the numbers, and seemingly have a sale every two weeks, maybe hire 1-2 more individuals? This would allow ideas like this one you think are great to be implemented, while not burdening your other duties.
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
I like this idea, and I think we could do a lot with it. I'll do some thinking on this.
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed - We meet every week to lay out every new bug for the board, and then Pinwheel updates the board every Friday to the new information
What does the new Trello board do what the old didnt? Listing bugs that got fixed in 2 years isnt new
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
I like this idea, and I think we could do a lot with it. I'll do some thinking on this.
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed - We meet every week to lay out every new bug for the board, and then Pinwheel updates the board every Friday to the new information
What does the new Trello board do what the old didnt? Listing bugs that got fixed in 2 years isnt new
I don't know if you're trying to be funny or asking a genuine question, but the new Trello board is updated weekly while the old one is not updated at all.
Yh but maybe invest more time in updating/fixing these bugs than doing hundreds of trello boards. All we can read from you „we are doing this and that and time is limited“ - what is right - but if time is a problem, u guys should focus on the important things. Fixing bugs that exists since forever and are destroying the gameplay should be a top priority. Dont know if u guys notice but u are close to kill BGs for example. No ones happy with the state of BGs. Instead u guys are wasting time for senseless pay events like DDHK. No one asks for something like that, no one likes it, no one needs it. Everyone needs Bug fixes(and i am talking important ones like 60 fps intercept bug), everyone would LIKE Updates to rewards to one of the most popular gamemodes which didnt happen for 1,5 years. Everyone needs better EQ rewards - why not updating rewards to the CURRENT progression title? No one needs These rewards, they dont have ANY benefit for Valiants. Whats so hard about it? Benefits for Players Are obviously not as important than benefits for kabam (Look at DDHK sale - there goes the resource time instead using it for something better)
Yh but maybe invest more time in updating/fixing these bugs than doing hundreds of trello boards. All we can read from you „we are doing this and that and time is limited“ - what is right - but if time is a problem, u guys should focus on the important things. Fixing bugs that exists since forever and are destroying the gameplay should be a top priority. Dont know if u guys notice but u are close to kill BGs for example. No ones happy with the state of BGs. Instead u guys are wasting time for senseless pay events like DDHK. No one asks for something like that, no one likes it, no one needs it. Everyone needs Bug fixes(and i am talking important ones like 60 fps intercept bug), everyone would LIKE Updates to rewards to one of the most popular gamemodes which didnt happen for 1,5 years. Everyone needs better EQ rewards - why not updating rewards to the CURRENT progression title? No one needs These rewards, they dont have ANY benefit for Valiants. Whats so hard about it? Benefits for Players Are obviously not as important than benefits for kabam (Look at DDHK sale - there goes the resource time instead using it for something better)
Come on man, be nice and constructive
To you it's a game, to them there are business decisions involved that they can't explain everything that simply or easily
Yh but maybe invest more time in updating/fixing these bugs than doing hundreds of trello boards. All we can read from you „we are doing this and that and time is limited“ - what is right - but if time is a problem, u guys should focus on the important things. Fixing bugs that exists since forever and are destroying the gameplay should be a top priority. Dont know if u guys notice but u are close to kill BGs for example. No ones happy with the state of BGs. Instead u guys are wasting time for senseless pay events like DDHK. No one asks for something like that, no one likes it, no one needs it. Everyone needs Bug fixes(and i am talking important ones like 60 fps intercept bug), everyone would LIKE Updates to rewards to one of the most popular gamemodes which didnt happen for 1,5 years. Everyone needs better EQ rewards - why not updating rewards to the CURRENT progression title? No one needs These rewards, they dont have ANY benefit for Valiants. Whats so hard about it? Benefits for Players Are obviously not as important than benefits for kabam (Look at DDHK sale - there goes the resource time instead using it for something better)
Come on man, be nice and constructive
To you it's a game, to them there are business decisions involved that they can't explain everything that simply or easily
It is constructive that they should use their resource time for player benefits instead company benefits. A game should be fun and rewarding. Actually we are playing for zero useful rewards in EQ, side quest, bgs.. instead they are releasing a DDHK sale which no one needs. Its a Bad Champ, who is useless everywhere. Surely they will earn some Money because some people dont know what to do with their Money. But Whats the Point to acquire this champ? He has no value and that also hurts kabams value in terms of Money that they generate. In every way its senseless.
U also can not defend that they are mostly releasing new Sales Content. I absolutely get it that they need to do it here and there. But the livestream was strictly „u can buy DDHK, u can buy Phoenix, u can buy the new eidol“ yet u cant get new BG, EQ, Side Quest rewards which are outdated more than a Year.
Yh but maybe invest more time in updating/fixing these bugs than doing hundreds of trello boards. All we can read from you „we are doing this and that and time is limited“ - what is right - but if time is a problem, u guys should focus on the important things. Fixing bugs that exists since forever and are destroying the gameplay should be a top priority. Dont know if u guys notice but u are close to kill BGs for example. No ones happy with the state of BGs. Instead u guys are wasting time for senseless pay events like DDHK. No one asks for something like that, no one likes it, no one needs it. Everyone needs Bug fixes(and i am talking important ones like 60 fps intercept bug), everyone would LIKE Updates to rewards to one of the most popular gamemodes which didnt happen for 1,5 years. Everyone needs better EQ rewards - why not updating rewards to the CURRENT progression title? No one needs These rewards, they dont have ANY benefit for Valiants. Whats so hard about it? Benefits for Players Are obviously not as important than benefits for kabam (Look at DDHK sale - there goes the resource time instead using it for something better)
Come on man, be nice and constructive
To you it's a game, to them there are business decisions involved that they can't explain everything that simply or easily
It is constructive that they should use their resource time for player benefits instead company benefits.
Yh but maybe invest more time in updating/fixing these bugs than doing hundreds of trello boards. All we can read from you „we are doing this and that and time is limited“ - what is right - but if time is a problem, u guys should focus on the important things. Fixing bugs that exists since forever and are destroying the gameplay should be a top priority. Dont know if u guys notice but u are close to kill BGs for example. No ones happy with the state of BGs. Instead u guys are wasting time for senseless pay events like DDHK. No one asks for something like that, no one likes it, no one needs it. Everyone needs Bug fixes(and i am talking important ones like 60 fps intercept bug), everyone would LIKE Updates to rewards to one of the most popular gamemodes which didnt happen for 1,5 years. Everyone needs better EQ rewards - why not updating rewards to the CURRENT progression title? No one needs These rewards, they dont have ANY benefit for Valiants. Whats so hard about it? Benefits for Players Are obviously not as important than benefits for kabam (Look at DDHK sale - there goes the resource time instead using it for something better)
To be perfectly brutally honest it's because different teams do different things and have different timelines. Specifically for Trello and bug fixes, I can't fix bugs (the last time I did coding was in grad school lol) but I can help organize, catalogue, and communicate them and their status. That's what the Trello is for. Definitely hear the feedback that it could be more useful ( @mgj0630 like Rex I can noodle on the updates idea, but in terms of the Trello board are there changes to it that could make it more useful for you?) but me working on that does not take away any time from fixing bugs. Honestly the project overall has been part of an extra focus on finding and fixing bugs, it's a long road but its probably one of the more publicly available signs that we are focusing on bug fixing.
I don't even know why Kabam is making a very active and involved community dig thru 3rd party sites and apps to find information. Forums>Bugs and Known Issues> Pin a post Simple.
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed
2) Communication: There's a significant lack of it. Fully appreciate that there's only so much Pinwheel and others can convey without feedback from the devs, but just in general, it's lacking. 2b) They obviously aren't obligated to do it, but i think if the community managers (Pinwheel, Dork, and Karate Mike) gave us a description of their day, perhaps we'd lay off them. Currently, my understanding is that they exist to keep us informed. I have no doubt there's more to their daily obligations to Kabam, but please educate us, so I'm not left to wonder why we go days without hearing anything.
Know there was a lot of disruption in this thread from the Davids (apologies for that, believe that problem is solved), but plenty of fair feedback here. First of all want to say thank you for your understanding and the feedback. I can't give a full response to everything right now, but I know this specific kind of breakdown has been asked (I think by you but if not by someone else) for before. I can't quite give an hour by hour because as acknowledged at the beginning of this thread there's a good bit of stuff we work on that we can't discuss before its time, but I can give a more general sense of the breadth of tasks involved.
First of all, yes, 100%, communication is one of our prime roles and responsibilities. However, communication is a two way street, and in our case we are the street, connecting up y'all's feedback, thoughts, concerns, reports etc to the game team and vice versa, connecting the game teams updates, fixes, changes, and plans (when appropriate) to y'all. Given that its more than just a few people involved (many hundreds and thousands of y'all at the very least on the one hand haha and the entire game team on the other) we also help to coordinate the planning and preparation of this messaging. Sometimes when you see an announcement it might be as simple as someone on the team saying hey we noticed this, we're gonna make this change, can you let them know real quick. Quite often though its a longer process than that, discussing the change, planning out when and how to release the message, what the knock on effects will be, etc.
So there's communication facilitation, which when there's multiple messages all going out at different times, requires more meetings than you would think haha. But in addition to that, there's the everyday stuff that y'all think about in terms of us being around and present. Posts on the forums, answers on discord, etc etc. This often gets sprinkled in between everything else we do and in the case of Dave for instance if you don't see him for a couple days its because that man has more meetings that just about anyone and I feel bad every time I look at his calendar.
In addition to that there's planning for events like nycc or comic-con, mcu tie-in activations and thinking of ways to have fun and engage with y'all as part of it, livestream planning (I know there was a joke about spending time writing jokes but in all seriousness it takes a ton of work to put together all the information and segments for each stream. I know there's some, fair, discussion in terms of the content folks wanna see vs don't wanna see, but no matter what the content is it takes dedicated time to put it all together), etc etc.
On top of that there's plenty of meetings with the game team to discuss all kinds of things, bugs (yes this is a top topic for us, for me specifically, and one that frustrates us like it frustrates you. We're working on it and I wish it could go faster than it can but its going as fast as we can make it right now), new features walkthroughs, champ design reviews, etc etc. Plus Rex oversees/produces the Deep Dives every month which takes an incredible amount of time between learning the champs, script writing, shooting, and editing.
I can probably list a few more things but hopefully the overall picture becomes more clear that, despite it often being the funniest part of my day and just generally a very enjoyable one, interacting with y'all here and on discord is just the tip of the iceburg for a community manager. We dip our toes into just about everything cause we gotta be ready to try and communicate just about everything haha. The unfortunate side effect of that is we wear a lot of hats and do a lot of juggling.
*Pause for breath*
I'm laughing to myself a little bit writing all this cause anyone who was part of the Forged to Fight or Mirroverse (or MROC rip) communities will tell you, this is me returning to form. I am a very wordy person by default and have been working to try and make myself a more streamlined, efficient communicator over the years. But this topic felt like it deserved the full Pinwheel essay treatment. Not as a way to list a bunch of excuses, not as a way to beg for something or say woe is me, but just to lay it out to hopefully make it make a bit more sense. We can always do a better job, and I don't want y'all to keep holding us accountable, but hopefully this helps make things a little clearer why there may be dips or gaps.
To anyone who is going to call bs on the meetings, if anyone from kabam has said anything that's true at all it's that and I believe them. If you work corporate, especially tech, you have so many meetings for so many random things that most of the time are just wasting everyone's time while they could be working. And GOD FORBID your company is using agile scrum methodology. You waste so much time it's genuinely incomprehensible to anyone not working a job with it
The wasted time is the only time we get a breathe of fresh air to relax.
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed
Are y'all not able to delete the old one?
We've been working on that but are currently locked out of it, funny to say.
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed
Are y'all not able to delete the old one?
We've been working on that but are currently locked out of it, funny to say.
Ahhh gotcha. It seemed that way but I didn't wanna assume.
So what’s going on with level rewards 62 still being bugged? We were told the fix was in this months build and clearly it’s not.
My understanding is that the blocker that required the new update, the reason we had to wait for the update before it would work, has been resolved so the fix for it can be done without needing a new client update. The team is checking on a last few things and then I think the rewards will need to be sent as comp mail, but I'll confirm that once I know for sure
The 7-star Incursions crystal reset timer doesn't bother me. It takes a while to earn that much Incursions crystals. Longer than the reset period. But the 7-star Loyalty crystal is the annoying one. It has an even longer reset timer, meanwhile I'm racking up enough loyalty to buy two of them by the time it resets.
@KabamPinwheel I don't want to quote your entire post and make the length of replies get out of hand, but I do want to sincerely thank you for that break down.
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
I like this idea, and I think we could do a lot with it. I'll do some thinking on this.
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed - We meet every week to lay out every new bug for the board, and then Pinwheel updates the board every Friday to the new information
I think the trello board is great but there’s still a ton of issues that don’t make their way on there from forums and discord.
Comments
First of all, yes, 100%, communication is one of our prime roles and responsibilities. However, communication is a two way street, and in our case we are the street, connecting up y'all's feedback, thoughts, concerns, reports etc to the game team and vice versa, connecting the game teams updates, fixes, changes, and plans (when appropriate) to y'all. Given that its more than just a few people involved (many hundreds and thousands of y'all at the very least on the one hand haha and the entire game team on the other) we also help to coordinate the planning and preparation of this messaging. Sometimes when you see an announcement it might be as simple as someone on the team saying hey we noticed this, we're gonna make this change, can you let them know real quick. Quite often though its a longer process than that, discussing the change, planning out when and how to release the message, what the knock on effects will be, etc.
So there's communication facilitation, which when there's multiple messages all going out at different times, requires more meetings than you would think haha. But in addition to that, there's the everyday stuff that y'all think about in terms of us being around and present. Posts on the forums, answers on discord, etc etc. This often gets sprinkled in between everything else we do and in the case of Dave for instance if you don't see him for a couple days its because that man has more meetings that just about anyone and I feel bad every time I look at his calendar.
In addition to that there's planning for events like nycc or comic-con, mcu tie-in activations and thinking of ways to have fun and engage with y'all as part of it, livestream planning (I know there was a joke about spending time writing jokes but in all seriousness it takes a ton of work to put together all the information and segments for each stream. I know there's some, fair, discussion in terms of the content folks wanna see vs don't wanna see, but no matter what the content is it takes dedicated time to put it all together), etc etc.
On top of that there's plenty of meetings with the game team to discuss all kinds of things, bugs (yes this is a top topic for us, for me specifically, and one that frustrates us like it frustrates you. We're working on it and I wish it could go faster than it can but its going as fast as we can make it right now), new features walkthroughs, champ design reviews, etc etc. Plus Rex oversees/produces the Deep Dives every month which takes an incredible amount of time between learning the champs, script writing, shooting, and editing.
I can probably list a few more things but hopefully the overall picture becomes more clear that, despite it often being the funniest part of my day and just generally a very enjoyable one, interacting with y'all here and on discord is just the tip of the iceburg for a community manager. We dip our toes into just about everything cause we gotta be ready to try and communicate just about everything haha. The unfortunate side effect of that is we wear a lot of hats and do a lot of juggling.
*Pause for breath*
I'm laughing to myself a little bit writing all this cause anyone who was part of the Forged to Fight or Mirroverse (or MROC rip) communities will tell you, this is me returning to form. I am a very wordy person by default and have been working to try and make myself a more streamlined, efficient communicator over the years. But this topic felt like it deserved the full Pinwheel essay treatment. Not as a way to list a bunch of excuses, not as a way to beg for something or say woe is me, but just to lay it out to hopefully make it make a bit more sense. We can always do a better job, and I don't want y'all to keep holding us accountable, but hopefully this helps make things a little clearer why there may be dips or gaps.
Thats how big reveals happen, lots of prep work ahead of time.
If you work corporate, especially tech, you have so many meetings for so many random things that most of the time are just wasting everyone's time while they could be working.
And GOD FORBID your company is using agile scrum methodology. You waste so much time it's genuinely incomprehensible to anyone not working a job with it
I know you didn't have to give it, but it certainly sheds a lot more light on the behind the scenes stuff you guys do.
What would you think about taking 30-60 minutes a week to hammer out an "Update" note?
Something that gives a status of bugs to us, cause no offense, the trello board seems to always be lacking.
Something that acknowledges new bugs, and a status of others (no really a bug, reproducible bug, acknowledged but unable to reproduce, etc) and perhaps are they assigned to someone?
I don't think it's asking too much, but I feel like it would go a long way with the community.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond!
Thank you
As someone who used to help moderate D2 forums, I can only IMAGINE how busy you and the community team must be pretty much all the time.
It’s super unfortunate that the game seems riddled with bugs, but it’s very very encouraging to hear directly from the horses mouth; that the issues are noticed and being worked on/prioritized.
So, thank you for that.
That being said, are you using the NEW Trello Board? The old one is still out there able to be viewed -
We meet every week to lay out every new bug for the board, and then Pinwheel updates the board every Friday to the new information
To you it's a game, to them there are business decisions involved that they can't explain everything that simply or easily
U also can not defend that they are mostly releasing new Sales Content. I absolutely get it that they need to do it here and there. But the livestream was strictly „u can buy DDHK, u can buy Phoenix, u can buy the new eidol“ yet u cant get new BG, EQ, Side Quest rewards which are outdated more than a Year.
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Simple.